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He was about to say something else, when Lin interrupted him. She’d finally turned from the window and was looking at him, a frown between her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be flying the ship?”

“Lin!”
Oh, goodness, please act as if you’ve been on a ship before. You must know
something
about them.

“Not right now,” Mr. James said politely. “I stood by during liftoff, but we’re well outside orbit now, Cadan’s on the flight deck, and the autopilot’s engaged. Our route has been set in advance, but I assure you that the moment either of us needs to be hands-on at the controls, we will be.”

“Oh,” said Lin. Then she hesitated, seeming to notice, for the first time, Elissa’s expression. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

“That’s quite all right, Ms. May.” He paused a moment, then turned back to Elissa, his smile going from polite to warm. “Ms. Ivory, would you like a visit to the flight deck? I don’t know how much you’ve flown, but it’s usually pretty interesting if you haven’t been on one before.”

“Oh—” Elissa spoke quickly to cover her instant negative reaction. “I don’t want to disturb Cadan.”

Mr. James grinned. “The ship’ll be more or less flying herself now. He’ll just be running diagnostics. Trust me, he won’t mind a little bit of a distraction.”

Oh, I think he might
. She was trying to think of a better excuse, when she caught sight of Lin’s expression, all saucer-eyed excitement. If Elissa refused this invitation, they might not get another, and Lin might not get to see any flight decks. “Thank you. We’d love to come.”

“Great!” His smile flashed out again. “If you’d like to follow me, I’ll show you the way.”

He led them through the center of the ship, up the
staircase that spiraled around the core that housed, among other things, the air-filtration system, the gravity drive, and the fuel tanks. Then up through one of the safety doors—this one set directly above their heads, the stairs leading through it—into a circular room that opened onto endless, star-strewn space.

For a moment it felt like being at the top of a miles-high tower, surrounded by a nighttime sky dazzling with darkness and brilliant with stars. Elissa went momentarily dizzy, the universe spinning around her, her feet feeling as if they might float off the ground. Beside her Lin gave an awed gasp.

Then Elissa’s eyes adjusted, the room came into focus, and she realized they’d reached the flight deck in the nose of the spaceship, and that the bridge stood on a shoulder-high platform in front of her.

“A little safety protocol,” said Mr. James, at the foot of the short flight of steps leading up to the bridge. He cleared his throat, then rattled out the next words. “I have to warn you that, as untrained persons, SFI laws strictly prohibit you from touching any toward

He took a breath. “In addition you are strictly prohibited, under any and all circumstances, including a directive from ship personnel, no matter how senior, from attempting to gain entry to the hyperdrive chamber”—he gestured briskly to the base of the platform, to the outline of a sealed door Elissa hadn’t noticed—“and you are warned that this law is enforced by SFI and by the elected planetary government of Sekoia, and that contravening it carries the penalty of imprisonment.” He mimicked running out of breath,
grinned, and gestured up the steps. “If you’ll follow me?”

The bridge was surrounded by what looked like no more than a waist-high wall, until Elissa reached it and realized that was just the lower part of the barrier. The wall, made of treated glass, almost as invisible as a force field, extended up as far as the curve of the ceiling, enclosing the whole of the platform. Mr. James pressed his thumb to a control panel at the top of the steps, and a section of the barrier slid out of the way to let them through.

Cadan, his back to them, sat on the other side of a railing and in front of a bank of screens, his hands flickering over a console as wide as the span of Elissa’s arms.

“Stew—” he said as the door opened, then checked himself. He turned slowly to look at them. Where his gaze touched her, Elissa’s skin prickled. She shouldn’t have given in to Lin’s obvious excitement about seeing the flight deck. Cadan didn’t want her there—didn’t want either of them there—and he’d insulted her enough yesterday. She really didn’t need to give him
more
opportunities.

Oblivious to Cadan’s cold gaze, to Elissa’s sudden discomfort, Mr. James—Stewart—was explaining that he’d invited them for a tour of the bridge. Cadan listened, not speaking, eyes back on the screens in front of him. On the largest, code scrolled endlessly upward. It was gibberish to Elissa and moving too fast for her to read. She remembered Bruce saying they’d all been put through an intensive course in speed-reading in order to deal with just this type of thing.

Stewart finished his cheerful explanation and turned back to Elissa and Lin. “Like I said, Cadan has engaged the autopilot, and the ship’s following her programmed route. He’s just running a diagnostic program now—to tell us if there
are any problems thinking about germinating, either in some part of the ship or on the projected flight path.”

“What sort of problems?” Lin’s eyes were still like saucers. She was standing very still in the center of the flight deck, hands tightly clasping each other.

“Oh, a glitch in one of the engines, or metal fatigue causing flaws in the outer shell. It’s smart-metal—it mends itself to some extent, but you have to be aware of what’s happening, whether a sheet might need replacing.”

“And that code?”

“That’s what tells us if something’s wrong. Those colors—” He turned to point something out, then tensed. “Cadan.”

Cadan had reacted at the same moment. His hand flew up the screen, froze the scrolling code. “I see it.”

“What is it?” said Lin, her voice unalarmed,. “Thank you.”rt fascinated.

Cadan reached over to another of the screens and opened up a window. “The forward-scanner’s picked up a cluster of debris on our flight path.”

“It can’t do us any damage.” Stewart glanced toward Elissa and then back to Lin, his smile reassuring. “It’s not big enough. But getting through it’s likely to cause turbulence, which is an inconvenience we can do without.”

Cadan had pulled both hands back to the keyboard and was tapping out new combinations, watching the seemingly infinitesimal changes they made to the patterns on yet another screen. His voice was distracted. “At least Ivan might finally appreciate that he’s
not
cooking over naked flames.”

Stewart laughed. “Ivan’s the chef we’ve got for this trip. He swears the only way food tastes good is if it’s cooked the old-fashioned way, with direct heat, but of course all the ships’ kitchens are full of nothing but safety burners.”

Fascinated, her attention fixed on the screens, Lin walked across the bridge to stand near Cadan. He shifted a little, his shoulders tensing. Behind him Lin unclasped her hands.

Déjà vu hit Elissa like something grabbing hold of her. Lin, controlling currents, interfering with electric circuits to make doors leap open and fires start, with that intent look on her face, her hands opening in concentration. Lin, who didn’t react like normal people—neither in the way she treated others, nor in thoughts for her own safety.

Elissa was across the bridge in three quick steps, her hand tight on Lin’s arm, fingers digging in, trying to send a silent message.
Lin, don’t do anything. Don’t use your electrokinesis. Don’t interfere
.

“Can you not do that, Elissa? Stewart
told
you to stay clear of the control panels.”

“I
am
staying clear,” she said, taken aback. “I’m not doing anything.”

Cadan flapped an irritated hand at her. “You’re . . . jigging around behind me. Can you—” He broke the words off, then paused, making an obvious effort to drag his voice back to civility. “Would you please stand a little farther back?”

“
Completely
no problem.” Elissa backed to the center of the platform, stiff with resentment, half-dragging Lin with her.

Stewart cleared his throat. “You’re working out alternative routes, Cadan? You don’t want to just hop past it?”

Cadan gave his head a quick sideways jerk. “Using hyperspeed this early in the flight, knowing the chief’s going to be asking for a full explanation for every particle of energy I’ve used when we get home? I’d rather find the slow way around this time.” His shoulders relaxed. “That’s it.
Okay
. We’re done.”

He hit the enter key, unfroze the diagnostic code, and set it scrolling again, then twisted his chair around to face them. His face held some of the same stiffness Elissa knew was showing in her expression, as if maybe he felt bad about snapping at her. Well, he should. Like she
needed
to be told not to touch the controls?

, eyebrows slightly raised., c“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I was working the flight path out, and I really didn’t need to have someone jog my elbow or—”

The injustice stung. “I wasn’t
going
to jog your elbow. I was nowhere
near
you.”

Unexpectedly, his mouth quirked in a tiny smile. “Come on, now. You were
somewhere
near me.”

“Oh,
whatever
.” Fury broke over her. “I was
behind
you—you couldn’t even
see
how close I was.”

His eyebrows went up, making her feel like a badly behaved little girl. “Elissa, come on, this is the bridge. Do admit I have some right to not have people hopping around behind me when I’m in the middle of flying the ship.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry. We’re going anyway.” She turned, pulling Lin around with her, and took a step toward the exit.

And a blast rocked the ship from end to end.

It knocked Elissa off her feet. She hit the floor with a bump that jolted through her hip and all the way up her spine. Lin lunged for the railing, swung one-handed, and banged against it, only just managing to stay on her feet.

At the controls Cadan reacted instantly, swinging his chair around to grab the throttle and drag the ship’s speed down. The
Phoenix
gave a shudder as the stability drive kicked in.

Stewart, at the screens so fast that Elissa didn’t see him cross the platform, pulled up full-perimeter visuals. “Pirates.”

Elissa’s stomach turned upside down. The screens showed four spacecraft surrounding the
Phoenix
. They’d come out of nowhere, jumping from God knew what distance away—small, sleek, built for speed, their sides bristling with guns that could tear a ship’s sides open. All SFI ships had shields—shields that were second to none, if Cadan and Bruce could be believed—but even the best shields, if hit hard and often enough, would degrade, leave the ship herself open to attack.

Above Cadan’s head the communication unit gave a sudden beep, lights flashing along its lower edge. Cadan, one hand on the throttle, didn’t even look up.

At the controls, flipping switches—
please let them be to arm the ship’s weapons
—Stewart said, “Captain . . .” He sounded breathless. Was this his first sole-charge flight too? Had he, like Bruce and Cadan, only been in simulated combat before? And now, on their first flight, just hours out of Sekoia’s protection . . .
How can there be pirates now? So soon after we left orbit?

Cadan didn’t answer.

“Cay, they want to talk.”

“No.” Cadan’s voice was cold and calm.

“Cay, if it just gives us time to fully arm the ship—”

“I said no.” Cadan didn’t take his eyes off the viewscreens. He moved the hand that was not on the throttle to another lever. His fingers whitened, closing their grip, easing the lever upward, and the ship gave another tiny shudder. “You know the, eyebrows slightly raised., c protocol as well as I do. No negotiation with pirates.”

Something cold lodged in Elissa’s chest. Without volition she found her gaze moving up to where Lin clung to the rail. Their eyes met.
They want to talk,
Stewart had said. To talk? Or to demand that Cadan hand over his two passengers? Were
they pirates, or were they something else entirely?

I thought we’d gotten away. I thought once we were off-planet, we’d be safe.

Another blast. Fire flared in the viewscreens as the missiles hit the
Phoenix
’s shields, but this time, stability drive fully engaged, the superbly built SFI-engineered ship scarcely shivered.

Thank God
. As long as the gravity drive kept working, it didn’t matter which way the ship was “up”—in space all directions were the same. But in a battle, Elissa knew they couldn’t afford to be tipped out of position.
Is this a battle now? If they’re after us and if Cadan won’t negotiate, what will the pirates do? They don’t want us killed, surely, but if they keep firing and firing and Cadan has to give in . . .

“Weapons ready, Captain.”

Cadan gave a jerk of a nod. “I’ve got her steady. Fire in three, two,
one
.”

Flames shot out, obscuring the vicious little spaceships behind momentary, instantly disappearing fireballs. Two direct hits against their shields, one miss as a little craft dropped abruptly out of sight, and a glancing blow that sent the remaining ship spinning out of control.

“Three, two,
one
.” Cadan’s voice was so steady, he might have been doing nothing more than directing Stewart to get him a coffee.

Stewart fired again. Another fireball disintegrated the shield around one of the ships and exploded against its side. Flames bloomed over the punctured hull, and the ship flipped, tumbling over and over.

“Three, two,
one
.”

But this time, as Stewart fired and the rockets shot out
across the viewscreens, all four pirate crafts winked out, leaving nothing but the split second of their afterimage floating in front of Elissa’s eyes. She blinked, and the afterimage was gone. On the communicator unit the lights died.

“Good God,” said Stewart. He put up a hand and wiped his sleeve across his forehead.